Mixtape XXI, Je Veax Te Baiser

Twenty years ago this week, Serge Gainsbourg departed from this life a calvados-, cognac- and Gauloise-smoke-soaked husk of a genius. There are conventional tributes laced with titillating anecdotes all over the place at the moment, so Silkworms thought we’d try doing something a little different, albeit equally celebratory: a Gainsbourg mixtape, along with a mini English-to-French dictionary that adopts the same approach to learning Serge’s language as he brought to learning ours. Namely, the selective mastering of useful phrases. Useful phrases like ‘I want to fuck you,’ as he gurgled at Whitney Houston on live television in 1986. Each useful phrase coming from a song on the mixtape. This, friends, is Music As Reading at its most educational.

Track one, 69 Année Erotique
For when you have an erotic experience on the Portsmouth/Caen night ferry and, for whatever reason, wish to discuss it subsequently in the third person present…

‘From their bed through the porthole / They look at the coast / They love each other and the crossing’

Track seven, Intoxicated Man
For when you’ve just told Whitney Houston that you want to fuck her on live television, and want to convince everybody that it only happened because you’re really goddam drunk…

‘I drink too strong a dose / I see pink elephants / spiders on the shirt of my tuxedo’

Track ten, L’homme A Tête De Chou
For when you wish to convey to your pretentious, bookish, vegan lover that you’re sick of her shitty cooking…

‘I am the man with the cabbage head / Half vegetable half dude’

Je suis l'homme à tête de chou / Moitié légume moitié mec

Track eleven, Le Chanson De Prévert
For when (misguidedly) arguing with your friend, the Kraftwerk fan…

‘But their song is monotonous’

Mais leur chanson est monotone

Track twelve, Marilou Sous La Neige
For when you decide it’d be best to let your passed-out hallmate Marilou go to sleep in the residue of your fresher-year, late-night fire extinguisher lols, rather than face the hassle of waking her up…

‘Let Marilou go to sleep under the carbon snow of the fire extinguisher’

Track fifteen, Ballade De Melody Nelson
For when giving up conveying to your bewildered friend why it is you dig Serge Gainsbourg above pretty much all other musicians, even though he wrote a song called Lemon Incest, the video for which featured him lying topless on a black bed drenched in dry ice with his 12-year-old daughter dressed in a man’s shirt and underwear and looking into his eyes, the pair duetting about ‘the purest, the headiest’ love they’ll ‘never make together’…

‘That surprises you, but that's how it is’

Ça vous étonne mais c'est comme ça

* This exercise wouldn’t have been possible without eggparm.com, remarkably the only decent resource dedicated to translating SG’s work into English on the entire internets. A. Chabot’s elegant, thoughtful translations are a joy to read in conjunction with the songs if your French is as limited as mine, and I’m hugely grateful for his/her efforts. http://www.eggparm.com/gainsbourg/ *